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User blog:The Sapphire Panda/Case Study: The Final Cinderella's Mansion
Hello, everyone! I'm The Sapphire Panda, and I'd like to start a new series of blog posts on this wiki, "investigations", if you will. As you may or may not know, a United States holiday is fast approaching: Thanksgiving! Though this is a very U.S.-bound holiday, I thought I'd bring some of my thankfulness to all of you! I'm thankful to the community, and therefore thankful to Dark Parables as well! I decided to start replaying a few entries in the series -- currently, as you may have guessed, I'm replaying The Final Cinderella, but I began this with a purpose, a question to answer: what is the history of Hilltop Mansion? Who originally built it, why, and how does it connect to the plot? I've sought to answer these questions for a long time, and through my most recent playthrough, I may have found some evidence and a bit of a contradiction within the Dark Parables series itself. To start, in The Final Cinderella, we already know the game starts in the Matese Mountains of Italy. In real life, the Matese are about in the middle of the Italian peninsula... but the game takes place near a body of water, on the edge of the continent. We can assume the edge of the mountains, right near the leftmost part of the peninsula, is where the mansion is. Throughout the game, we encounter ruins that are crumbling yet beautiful, overtaken by nature. Clearly this was once inhabited land at some point, but that point is unclear. What we can tell is that the architecture is distinctly Roman; arches, domes, an ampitheater, and even a bathhouse connected to a natural water source. Considering the statues, I'd say this whole area of ruins dates to about the late days of the Roman Empire, about 1 - 300 CE. With that established, I'd confidently say this is the case, but... of course it can't be that simple. I would believe the hilltop manison was renovated and made more modern through the years, and perhaps it was originally a palace, but that doesn't line up with what we know so far about Cinderellas. The first Godmother was chosen by the Maiden Goddess in Anaben, which we know for a fact is in Switzerland at the base of the Alps. However, Anaben is a duchy, ruled by a duke. The first concept of a duke wasn't created until kings were also prevalent in Europe, at least 600 CE, and even then they were more of tribal chiefs than kings. The timeline doesn't make sense; how could Roman ruins favor a goddess who hadn't even made herself known the the world yet? The temple would've been built two hundred, likely more, years prior to the Maiden Goddess's choosing of the first Godmother in Anaben! It just doesn't add up. Additionally, who was the mansion/ruins built for? The statue of a Cinderella out front hints that she was connected to the mansion; but she couldn't have been given what we know. Godmother helped four Cinderellas that we were told about, yet one parable says "she helped many" not just four. Agnes (the second Cinderella) was helped by Amelia, but she was part of a kingdom, which we've already established comes after the Roman Empire. However, we know Ella can't be the female statue either, since her story involves a ball, which wasn't even thought of until about the 15th century. If this area is Roman, whose is it? It's entirely possible the mansion is inherited from godmother to godmother, but that just doesn't seem right to me. Even if this were the case, the first godmother couldn't live here because she was chosen in the medieval era -- but then again, having her chosen that late in history contradicts that, somehow, five other godmothers AND THEN Amelia followed within a span of 200 years -- it doesn't make sense. Of course, there may not be a connection here, and perhaps I'm overlooking something overwhelmingly simple. Either way, it's interesting to think about. What do you think? Is this a developer oversight? Did Eipix just not do their homework on this one by making the first Godmother be chosen after the architectural era of the ruins? Well, that's it for now, so... Ciao! ~ Category:Blog posts